


You Forgot to Make a Clean Cut

by Sandalaris



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Canon Compliant, Could Be Canon, During season two, F/M, Gen, Sonja is a rebound, Sonja mentioned but this is pre-bathroom sex, and Seth is very much aware of it in this, could be taken as not shippy but I meant it as shippy, more pre-Seth/Kate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 04:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15856026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandalaris/pseuds/Sandalaris
Summary: Kate can't just leave things the way they were. Or maybe she just needs the last word.aka: the one where they don't see each other again, but they do talk on the phone. And Seth get's his good-bye.





	You Forgot to Make a Clean Cut

**Author's Note:**

> This was completely brought on my Kate saying Jessica texted her. Which made me think that Kate still had her phone, or at least phone number, from before.

It takes three days after the Twister for Seth to come back to the hotel room (fourth one they've been in) with a pre-paid flip phone. 

She watches him set it up, tossing bits of cardboard and hard plastic onto the floor as he heads towards the table and chair their meager belongs are sitting on. She thinks about asking him if he got her one, before remembering she’s not missing. Still on that family vacation with no end date given. No one’s looking for her. No one’s left who would. 

“Here,” he says, handing it to her and flicking his finger between them, “add your number.” 

Her own phone, a touch-screen model from last year in a sky-blue case, looks clean and modern and childish next to his as she types in the digits. It would be, she thinks, Seth and Richie had taken their phones when they took her family, shoving them into the glove compartment so no one would be tempted to do “something stupid.” 

Kate wonders what it says about her, if it’s just another sign of her age or if it’s something deeper, that she grabbed it and not her passport that following dawn. 

\- 

She doesn’t know why she does it. She finally left him. Left Seth to his drugs and his anger, and yet she can’t seem to stop her fingers from twisting the wheel, pulling over onto the side of the road and fishing out her phone from her bag. 

She doesn’t even know if his pre-paid flip-phone gets texts, as cheap as it is. He’s only ever used it to call her. When he decide to stop and get lunch and wanted to know what she wanted, or when he’d wake up and she was gone, the sun long since set and whatever made-up time of the night passed when he felt she should have been back in the motel room. Back with him. She never brought it up, even when it made her feel like a child having to mind an ever-changing curfew to a man whom she didn't owe a damn thing too. Not when he never said a word that first week on the road, when she’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking and breathing rapidly, calming herself enough to crawl into the empty space beside him. He'd murmur, throw an arm over her waist, and settle back down, and hold the comments come morning.

Neither of them really wanted to be alone. Sometimes she thinks that’s all it was. Other times she knows better. 

Still, she opens her contacts, finds his name and presses. Types out and sends the message before she can manage to convince herself it’s a bad idea.

_stay safe_

A short text, reminding her oddly of the Twister and the moment she thought she’d never see him again, turning back to find her missing her brother while he took the exit. Now she's half-a-mile on the US side of the boarder, after nearly two days of driving, with the woosh of cars passing her while she stares at the screen without seeing it. Waiting for a response she doesn’t actually expect. Her mama always said Kate didn’t have a bone in her body that could hold a grudge. Probably why she forgave Scott within weeks him of breaking the most sacred of commandments and committing the worst of sins all with one bite. For making them both orphans. 

Then again, so did she. 

Scott’s venom may have been in his veins, but it was her stake in their daddy’s heart. 

She sits with the sun beating down on her through the driver’s side window, stolen cash in the passenger seat and stares at that simple message for what feels like hours. He never responds. 

Kate takes it as a sign. 

\- 

There’s a stack of cash on the dresser and a new car in his uncle’s garage. Sonja’s cash. His car. Agreement fulfilled, and for the first time in a long time he feels like his old self. Or maybe a new self. Richie burned him up in a fiery crash after all. 

He presses the phone harder into his ear as it clicks in answer. 

_“Seth?”_

It hits him like a punch to the gut, that voice coming down the line. Soft and hesitating and echoing the one his mind conjured those handful of nights past, when he finally hit the bottom of the hole he’d been digging himself into since his brother severed their ties once and for all. Sometimes, when its late enough and he’s between sleep and awake, he can feel her hands against his cheek in a way they never were when she was actually with him. 

“You find that brother of yours yet?” The words come out more biting than he meant for them, a hidden sneer that he knows Kate will hear. 

_“Not yet,”_ she says. Her voice is tinny over the line, losing some of that sweetness that left him feeling hot and restless and guilty all those weeks in Mexico. He closes his eyes against the ache of it, reaching instead for that ever-present anger that’s next to where he keeps her memory. Let’s it wrap comforting arms around him. _“But I know where he’s at.”_

He scrambles for a response. Something that’ll hurt. Remind her that she’s chasing a monster. That Scott doesn’t want her. Make her regret leaving him. Regret not choosing him. (To make her come back.) 

_“He came home, Seth.”_

Just like that his anger cracks, fragile shell of it breaking open and disintegrating at the hope that trembles in her voice, and something that feels too much like grief, sudden and unwanted, rears in its place. 

“That’s... good for you, princess.” 

_“Have you...?”_

She trails off, and he remembers this too. When she wanted to ask him something she thought he wouldn’t want to answer. Begins a question with a tilt of her head and soft eyes and trailing off midway, reluctant to cause him pain. At least at first, until it became common for him to spill his bitterness at her and she started lashing back in defense. 

She could be just as cruel as him, when she wanted to be. 

He doesn’t know what she’s going to ask this time. Has he found Richie? Been getting high? Missed her? 

“I’m at my Uncle Eddie’s place,” he says before she can scrounge up the courage to finish. Because she will. She’s so much stronger than him at pushing through the tough moments. 

_“Really?”_

He can practically hear her curiosity, almost see the small, excited smile tugging the corners of her lips. They used to share stories, in the middle. Before he started losing himself in a needle and she started sneaking off, but after they put miles between them and that hellhole. When they were still good together. 

And suddenly, fiercely, he wants Kate to meet the man he’s told her so much about. The only bit of family Seth has left. Give her a face to the name and introduce his uncle to the preacher’s daughter he stole but couldn’t manage to keep. 

“Yeah. He’s gotten into this shit coffee.” He almost smiles, one hand coming up to gesture even though she can’t see him. “And not, like the coffee tastes like shit, but that it actually comes from shit. Monkeys eat these berries or something, I don’t fucking know, but it makes this expensive ass coffee that Uncle Eddie just eats up, and uh...” He squeezes his eyes shut, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, words dissolving on his tongue like the false hope of Kate’s return. “He tells it better than I do.” 

She hmm’s in response and he looks at the wall, taking a breath and tries to find the words. The right ones. The ones he should have said that night. 

“Kate...” 

_“He’s my brother,”_ she says before he can continue, reading into his utterance of her name and knowing what he’s going to say. He wishes she’d share with the class, because he sure as shit doesn’t. Wouldn’t change anything, he reminds himself, no matter what he says. 

“Yeah, I know,” he finally sighs. 

_“I gotta go,”_ she says after a small pause. He makes a noise of bewilderment, or maybe protest, and she continues, _“I meant it, what I- Did you get my text?”_

He shifts on his feet, licking his lips and turning in a restless circle, suddenly eager to end the call. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” 

_“I meant it.”_

“Good-bye, Kate.” 

He flips the phone closed, not waiting for her response. His eyes fall to the bathroom door. Sonja's in there, a handful of feet away with toned legs and a great ass and having made it perfectly clear she wants to fuck him. 

And Kate... Kate’s gone. 

He knocks on the door.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally longer, including Seth's rereading the 'stay safe' text from Kate after her death and wallowing in grief. But I didn't like it ending on quite such a sad note.


End file.
